The Moon's Complexion

by Irene Black

  At this time also, I discovered that my wife was involved in a relationship with the lesbian writer Hannah Petersen. Petersen was not only encouraging Maighréad in her self-mutilation but helping her to achieve it. It became clear to me that not all of Maighréad’s wounds could have been self-inflicted. No, of course not. Because they were inflicted by Hannah Petersen. It was all part of a plot to discredit me, to have me arrested and put away, as I was an obstacle that got in the way of their plans.

  Ashok had to stop reading. Filled with disgust at the monster’s raving, he got up and helped himself to a whisky from the mini-bar. For a few moments, he let the fiery liquid revitalize his pounded mind.

  Reluctantly, he picked the book up again and leafed through the next few pages. He came to the section that concerned the trial.

  In prison I was often asked why I did not speak out at the time. There is no mystery about this. I loved Maighréad, so I kept silent while she was alive. I was convinced that she would come through for me in the end. Perhaps it was necessary for her to witness my suffering in order to come to terms with her own guilt. In the end, she could no longer live with what she had done to me.

  Ashok put down the book and poured himself a second whisky. Absurdly, he suddenly craved a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked since he had held the obligatory Havana between his fingers at May Ball in Oxford. He shook off the idea.

  He took up the book again and turned to the section headed “Hannah Petersen.”

  Hannah Petersen was born in London in 1960, the daughter of Miryam Rosen and Christian Petersen, a Danish archeaologist.

  A much older brother converted to Buddhism and retreated to a hermitage in Sri Lanka.

  Older brother? Hannah never mentioned that. What rot.

  He skimmed through the rest of the book to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important. Something near the end caught his eye.

  ... escaped from the clutches of Hannah Petersen simply to fall into equally treacherous hands, those of an Indian doctor, who took advantage of her once I was out of the way, and whose treatment of her resulted in depression and self-doubt. To get away from this man she fled back to the place where she and I had been happy. It was in Belfast that she finally confronted her guilt. However, instead of confessing and thereby securing my release, she was so disturbed as a consequence of her treatment by her two lovers that she took her own life.

  Her suicide note, with its biblical quotation, was intended to prove my innocence and acknowledge the guilt of her actions.

  “Come let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves... For the good man is not at home, he is gone a long journey;” Proverbs Chapter 7.

  Chapter 7 of the Book of Proverbs is a warning against the adulteress, which ends with the following words:-

  “For she hath cast down many wounded: yes, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”

  Ashok threw the book down in disgust. The hateful thing seemed to stab at his eyes whenever he looked at it. The fact was the man had obviously been completely psychotic when he wrote it. How could any decent publishing company have considered it?

  He looked at the publisher’s insignia. Ah, Shining Light. That explains it. A sensationalist, unscrupulous, fringe publisher. Fighting revulsion he picked it up again and spent the next twenty minutes systematically tearing it into tiny shreds, which he flushed bit by bit down the toilet.

  * * * *

  The falling snow and the unaccustomed Ford Escort made Ashok drive cautiously, despite his impatience. Due to the bad weather, the car had been delivered late to the hotel. It was almost eleven before he had managed to get away. Now it took nearly two hours to reach Burfold.

  By the time he got there, his nerves were on edge. He parked in the car park of the Red Fox. He was reminded of his first bitter visit to the village in similar weather. Would today bring a happier conclusion? He walked through the driving snow past the frozen duck pond, along the green, and turned up Drake Lane. As he passed the tweedy man’s house, Bert the obese spaniel staggered down to the gate, his ears stiff as stalactites, and greeted him with a furiously wagging tail. Ashok stopped to pat him.

  “Glad to see you’re still around, old chap.” Somehow, seeing the dog seemed a good sign. Ashok felt at home.

  And suddenly, there was the cottage. He stopped at the gate and stared. It was just the same—and yet different somehow. Then he realized that Hannah must have had a clean up. The peeling paint had been replaced. The trees had been pruned, and the drive re-laid in tarmac. Cautiously, Ashok opened the newly painted gate. He felt his heart beating with such force that it was likely to push him over. He reached the front door, hesitated for an instant, pulled himself together, and knocked. The wait seemed interminable. He knocked again.

  A woman’s voice. “Yes, yes. Just coming.” The door opened.

  For several seconds, they stood like statues just staring at each other. Ashok broke the silence.

  “You,” he breathed.

  “Namaste, Ashok.” A pause then, “You’d better come on in.”

  Stumbling in his confusion, Ashok followed Felicity into the hall.

  “You’re wet. Give me your jacket.” Blindly, he obeyed. “Come on, let’s go into the living room.” She ushered him through a door.

  “Have a seat.”

  He shook his head. “Where’s Hannah?”

  “She’s not here, Ashok—as you can see.”

  “What the hell’s going on? What are you doing here?”

  “I work for Hannah. I’ve been helping her with her book—about Mark. And I’m looking after the cottage while she’s away.”

  Ashok couldn’t take it in. Felicity in Hannah’s house? There was no mistaking her. She had filled out a little, and her hair had reverted to its natural blonde color, but for a moment he saw again the young woman who had walked with Duncan Forbes into the twenty-four-hour bistro at the Chamundi and impressed him with her composure.

  Ashok said, “Where is she?”

  The telephone in the hall rang. Felicity went out to answer it.

  Ashok looked anxiously around the room. He didn’t know what he was looking for. A sign that would link Hannah to him; something, perhaps, that would give him hope, would tell him that India still had a place in her heart. He’d been standing facing the French window, with his back to Hannah’s desk in the far corner. Now as he turned, he saw the desk. He stared at it, spellbound. For there, expensively framed and hanging above it, just as it had hung above his own, was his old poster of Ganesh. And as if that were not enough, he then spotted, sitting on the desk, the blue-gray soapstone Ganesh that he had bought her that day long ago at Mamallapuram. He could still picture the moment so clearly. “It’s yours. So that you’ll remember Mamallapuram.” And her reply. “I’ll treasure it. But do you really think I could forget today?”

  He felt his eyes brimming over, but then, just as Felicity came back into the room carrying two bottles and glasses, he saw on the desk something else that completely engulfed him.

  “Who,” he said slowly, “is that child in the picture with Hannah?”

  Felicity placed the glasses on the coffee table.

  “Cognac? Or would you prefer whisky?”

  “Felicity...”

  Undaunted, she poured out two cognacs and offered one to Ashok. “You’d better drink this.”

  Angrily, he shook his head. Felicity put the glass back on the table and sat down, cradling her own glass in her hand.

  “That’s Siddarth. Hannah’s son.”

  Bewilderment. Incomprehension. Disbelief. “Son? Siddarth? When…?”

  Once again, Felicity calmly handed Ashok the brandy glass. This time he took it, with shaking hands.

  “Siddarth was born in Sri Lanka, Ashok.”

  “He’s...he’s Sri Lankan?”

  “I think you’ll have to ask her that. It’s not really for me to say.” But s
he was smiling at him, quite tenderly.

  Silently, Ashok drained his glass, and Felicity poured them both another.

  “I can’t ask her anything if you don’t tell me where she is.”

  “Why, after all this time, do you think she’ll want to see you?”

  Ashok’s mind was still cauterized by the news he’d just received. He struggled to explain to Felicity, as coherently as possible, about Priya’s letter.

  “Look,” he added, “I know she’d want to see me if she knew. Look at this room.” He waved his hand in the direction of the desk. “It’s obvious she must still care for me.”

  “Okay, Ashok, I think you deserve a chance to put your case. You realize she’ll probably kill me for this? Ah well. So be it. Hannah’s taken Siddarth to India.”

  No, Ashok thought. This can’t be happening. “Where in India?”

  “Well, she didn’t exactly say where she’d be at any particular time. You know what she’s like when she takes off. Secretive. She likes to get away from it all.”

  Ashok nodded.

  “She did say, though, something about the honeymoon she never had. She wanted to take Siddarth there over New Year.”

  “Kerala. She’s going to Cochin. Thanks, Felicity. I owe you.” He stood up, with the unsteady pitch of a recently KO’d boxer.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Back to my hotel, pick up my bag, airport.”

  “Now steady on, old man. You’re all hopped up. You shouldn’t be driving anywhere. In any case, by the time you get back, it’ll be too late for a flight today.”

  She was right. He shouldn’t be driving.

  “I’ll drive you to the airport early tomorrow morning. Today, you’re going nowhere. You can stay here tonight.”

  By now, he was ready to agree to anything.

  “Okay,” he heard himself saying through lips unwilling to be mustered into speech, “tomorrow it is.”

  Felicity nodded and poured him a whisky. “That was Duncan on the phone, earlier. I didn’t tell him you were here. I thought you’d prefer him not to know. In any case…” She grinned. “…I thought he might get jealous if he knew you were here with me.”

  He grimaced. “Duncan? Ugh! Felicity, really. Not again! Not that bozo.”

  “Hey! Watch it, you. He’s all right, really. It’s a good thing he’s in New York till the weekend, though, isn’t it?”

  “Tell me, why did you help Hannah? I thought you were so devoted to Mark?”

  “Why?” She gave a harsh laugh. “It’s all in Hannah’s book, Ashok. If you can bear to read it.”

  * * * *

  On board the aircraft, Ashok stretched out in First Class comfort and tried to sleep. But the headache was too insistent, like a warning signal in his brain. His euphoria of the previous day had fled with the remaining traces of alcohol, leaving a sense of letdown and uncertainty. All this way, and she wasn’t even there. And a son. Whose? A dark child, yes, but could just as easily be Sri Lankan as Indian. That the child might be his was a possibility too charged to risk consideration. Then—what if Kerala was a bad guess? Maybe she had another honeymoon in mind. Who knows what happened during the last four years.

  To distract himself from his discomfort, he opened the copy of As a Matter of Fact that Felicity had thrust into his hand as a parting shot. He opened it with some misgiving. Wasn’t it futile to dredge up the past? According to the Guardian review, the book had revealed no definitive answers. Nevertheless, he started to leaf through it and gradually became so absorbed that the headache backed off grudgingly, like a discarded lover.

  The first part of the book yielded no surprises. Ashok knew every word of Hannah’s story up to the time she had arrived in Bangalore. After that it continued, selectively, until Salers’ death. The facts were reproduced with chilling objectivity. Some details, too personal for public airing, were left out or disguised. Several names had been changed or omitted, to ensure the privacy of those concerned, as Hannah explained in her preface. Willi and Ashok had mutated to become one person, a woman whom Hannah had called Beattie, and the sequence of some events and some minor details had been changed to make this plausible.

  The feeling of discomfort briefly returned. Why a woman? Why couldn’t they have been combined into masculine form? Surely he was more masculine than Willi was feminine? Was there a message in this?

  Ashok swallowed hard and read on, struggling to overcome his aversion. He found no mention of Duncan, other than as Hannah’s publisher, or of Felicity. They were irrelevant to the events that had directly involved Hannah. Thus, she had included her encounters at Golconda, Beattie’s incarceration, the snake in Beattie’s bag, Beattie’s sighting of Salers on the train, the falling rock, the stolen film, and all that had occurred between their arrival in Bandipur and Salers’ demise at Nanjangud. It was Beattie alone who was involved in the final moments of Salers’ life, which were handled with cold detachment. This section concluded with some information about the gun.

  It was an early 9 mm Beretta automatic, circa 1935, that appeared to have started life as a sidearm in the Italian Militia. Where Salers obtained it is uncertain, but it is clear that he had many contacts in Hyderabad and Chennai. Due to its poor condition, its trigger mechanism was unreliable. This accounted for the few seconds’ delay that gave Beattie the opportunity to disarm Salers.

  The rest of the book was an attempt to disentangle the facts of Salers’ life from the fiction. It was now that Ashok straightened up his posture-contoured, ultra-snug-pile backrest and dug deeply into the cocktail of disclosures, hypotheses, and conclusions that Hannah presented. Felicity’s input had been vital. Facts, hitherto unreported, emerged about Salers’ youth in India. Facts that Felicity, in her blind devotion to Mark, had suppressed for all of her adult life.

  A drunken, depressed father, who was frequently and, at the time inexplicably, absent. A weak, dominated mother, who disliked her son and lavished all her love and attention on her daughter.

  And something else that Felicity had blocked out but that Hannah half-coaxed into the open. A faint memory of Mark taking comfort in Felicity’s bed, when she was too young to understand. It stopped when she was six, and the exact truth remained locked in Felicity’s mind. Hannah was convinced that this went some way to explaining Mark’s hold over Felicity.

  She also postulated that his early days contained ingredients that could, arguably, given the catalyst of imprisonment, have bonded together into a psychosis.

  Ashok closed the book. Enough, he told himself. He knew that if he read on, he might discover more about Maighréad. Where was she born? Who were her parents? Were they killed by a Loyalist bomb? Ashok had no stomach for further revelations, further enigmas, further doubts. So what? He said to himself. So fucking what?

  He closed his eyes, but sleep evaded him. An image of Janaki started to urge itself into his mind. He tried to shut it out, but it persisted. “What would have happened,” she was asking, in that forceful, direct manner of hers, “if I hadn’t gone to LA? Would you still be on this mission to find Hannah?”

  Ashok opened his eyes with a start and tried to push Janaki out of his thoughts. Some questions are best left unanswered. But her question kept tugging at his mind until the answer came to him; this whole sequence of events was meant to be. If Janaki hadn’t left him, Priya wouldn’t have made her confession. He would never have known about her visit to Hannah. He felt a surge of excitement. Now he knew beyond a doubt that he would find her.

  “Your book fell down, Sir,” the steward said, handing As a Matter of Fact to him. “You’d left it balanced on the armrest.”

  “Thanks.” Ashok took the book back and started, almost mechanically, to thumb through it again.

  Maighréad always maintained that Loyalists killed her parents, he read and nodded to himself, remembering that she had told him the same.

  According to Mark Salers, on the other hand, she grew up in an orphanage in Belfast. Neither ver
sion tells the true story.

  Through my enquiries I was able to ascertain that Maighréad was indeed placed in an orphanage for the first five years of her life. At the age of five she was adopted by a Belfast couple. Her adoptive parents were killed in a bomb attack in Belfast city centre when she was fifteen. Maighréad was there, but unhurt. Mark Salers was one of the first reporters on the scene. He married her three years later.

  Bingo, he thought. So she was telling the truth. I’m not that bad a judge of character. But hang on—what did Hannah mean—neither version tells the true story?

  Further investigation, however, revealed that it was not a Loyalist bomb that killed her parents. The bomb had been planted by the IRA. Why did Maighréad lie to me? I can only conclude that the truth was too painful for her, a Catholic girl, to acknowledge.

  Ashok nodded to himself. In spite of this latest snippet, it was all beginning to make sense now. Maighréad gets dumped at the orphanage, is then adopted, her parents are killed in a bomb attack, and Salers comes to the rescue. After he marries her he starts roughing her up. This sort of behavior, Ashok remembered, coaxing his mind back into the contents of his undergrad psychiatry course, can often be completely detached from a person’s genuine feelings for their partner.

  It would appear that Salers was really obsessed with Maighréad and flipped when Hannah rescued her from his clutches. Up until his conviction, he remained sure that Maighréad would retract her accusations. When she didn’t and he was hauled off to the Scrubs, it was the final straw. After that, all he wanted was revenge against Hannah. Meanwhile, Maighréad’s traumas caught up with her, despite Ashok’s best efforts. When she died, Salers was freed from the need to keep silent and was able to fabricate the lies about her and spice them up with lies about Hannah. By this time, the man was psychotic and probably believed them. Ashok felt a surge of relief. They’d been right all along, he and Hannah. They hadn’t lived a lie.