A Dark Nativity

by George Pitcher

  I’d felt this way once with an extreme hangover. It had been the morning after arriving back from the feeding stations of Sudan and sixteen weeks of watching babies die, so my consciousness may have been attenuated then too.

  I stopped once to give a penny-whistler a five-pound note. I don’t know why and I don’t care. I lied that I already had the magazine he was selling from a pile behind him. God bless you and have a very good day, he’d said. He was groomed and scruffy at the same time, the way you are when you’re clean but in scavenged clothes. Maybe I just needed to make human contact with someone around me, to prove I was there and not some spectre at London’s eternal feast.

  I checked into a Babylon of a hotel in Shepherd’s Bush to which Sarah had directed me, one of the transit camps for Heathrow airport. I was glad – I didn’t want to be central, too cramped, enclosed and expensive. And, anyway, it felt like being outside the city walls. Masha’s debit card worked when the cashier swiped it and I wondered wistfully whether my balance was not only being watched but managed, topped up by an indulgent uncle subsidising a wayward, orphan niece. Well, Tiffany’s next, and I smiled.

  It had a “Business Centre”, so a code for an hour of internet took me to a mezzanine with a row of PCs where young women with hair extensions and power tights were convincing themselves by booking venues that they had careers in marketing. I opened the fresh email account I’d been assigned.

  The name looked strange now I saw it on screen. I stared at it for maybe quarter of an hour. Incoming messages: 0. Sent Mail: 0. Outbox 0. Drafts 0.

  I opened a browser, ludicrously ran a search on Israeli settlements. And there they were, their smart little white boxes, clustered new towns on the plains and downs of the West Bank.

  The soft rustle of the lift took me to my room. 119. A recovery cubicle for the commercially sick, with a window that locked open at four inches, a little acknowledgement that at least some of its occupants would want to throw themselves out of it into a defiant oblivion, write themselves off the balance sheet, form that crazy shape in the car park.

  I’d taken an apple, a supple red like all the rest, from a display in the mezzanine cafe, put it on a small plate, taken a knife from the grey plastic container with four pods for knives, forks, big spoons, teaspoons, which made the same crunch when you disturbed the cutlery, like beach stones on a tide, as the ones we had at school did. Now I sliced my apple, coring the segments with my knife into a little white towel from the bathroom that reminded me of the linens that the silent boy brought me over my buckets in that Israeli room.

  It was too blunt to skin the apple and the serrated inch on its curve too clumsy, so I lay the four little segments side by side on the glass-topped table by the London tourist magazine, like boats in a harbour.

  Yes, and with an electric-cold shiver I ran the blade gently up the soft underside of my forearm, from the wrist to the pit of the elbow and my body buckled in welcome.

  Come pierce me, make me pay. A little more pressure on the next stroke and I had the dry line of a scratch. Then with a grunt of welcome the slight serration went in, in, in, a furrow ploughed between sinews, dimpled blue veins giving way like sapling roots, or weeds in a pond, with the great unreachable prize, the great lazy pikes of arteries somewhere much lower and safer, in crimson depths. Life blood bubbled up and eagerly ran the little circumference of my arm and dripped into the white towel that I would leave in the little sanitary bin for tampons.

  The pain was distant, not mine, and I cut again, across this time. A cross. It was some kind of justice. Some recognition of both my worth and worthlessness. And, oh, you can’t believe, that’s so good to confess. I had to clench my thighs to stop myself wetting at my own confession. I dripped blood. I was both mortal and alive. I could slice my vile body and it would shed, you see? For you, for me. I was flesh and blood.

  18

  I was being watched. I was convinced of that now. I couldn’t stay in my room; there was a tiny red bulb in the ceiling corner, a little light on the air-conditioning unit above the bathroom door that looked fibre-optic and a television on a short metal arm that I turned to face the window. All the time I rocked, with my own voice telling me that they weren’t watching me through anything glass and electric. It was like trying to locate my own cry, a call that would haul me back from stupid, mistaken presumptions. I struggled to be rational.

  I still had Masha’s debit card. Sarah had said it was better to stick with Masha for money, even on Huda’s passport. But maybe they all knew about Masha in London? I knew I had trusted Sarah because I wanted to. That’s the only reason anyone ever invests trust. Trust in God. I’d checked into the hotel she’d told me to, hadn’t I? But the receptionist had paused at her screen, maybe to check me into this room specially? So I could be watched? And around my head the doubts went again.

  It was me that was ahead of the game, I kept telling myself, not them. But how-could-they-know kept seguing into how-did-they-know. Fear of surveillance gives you a physical reaction. I was telling myself that I was on my own; I’d breathe deeply, but I still turned my back to the little blinking lights and the TV. I sat on the edge of the bed, facing the en-suite wall, and shook a bit. Until I thought there was an audio monitor of some sort in the bedside lamp, tracking my breathing.

  So I left the room again, banging against the walls of the long corridor. Probably drunk, I saw a room-maid think, as I tracked the wall past her trolley. Now I was watching myself as through CCTV, the grey figure in staccato little freeze-frames, like those shots of murdered teenagers or robbed newsagents.

  I made it to the lifts, but then couldn’t get in a lift that was occupied. A man and a woman, dressed as tourists, probably Scandinavian. They looked concerned, but I was thinking it was strange that such people would come for me. I dashed for the stairs and back down to the Business Centre. The pumping of blood made my forearms tingle along the weals the fruit knife had made, now coagulated.

  I had less fear of the PC there, for some reason. Perhaps because it took my password, obeyed my command, you see? I was looking outwards through it, you understand, and no one could look back at me. I felt clammy sweat cool on the backs of my hands.

  One received mail. I sat and stared, without opening it. Another delicious anticipation. Also cherishing imminent relief and delaying disappointment – suppose it was just a welcoming message from the provider? But it was real. Yusef was there for me. I was connected, across the multitudes of Europe, across the Balkans, across the eastern Med, connected to the place that had nearly killed me, with someone – even there – who loved me, who had sent this gift of grace, who had reached out in my loneliness and touched me and made me real.

  The title box just said “Message” beside the paperclip of an attachment. From an email address that was just a jumble of numbers and letters, an Arab tramp hitching a ride with this gleaming great Western railroad of internet mail.

  I moved the cursor across with a now quite steady hand and clicked. There was, of course, no message, just a PDF. I opened it and the screen filled with white nothing. I scrolled. Some Arabic emerging from the right that I didn’t recognise, then some numbers in Roman numerals, like filing references. At the bottom, a crude stamp – a raised arm, clutching an assault rifle, the emblem of the Shia military that had constituted Hezbollah – and a date. It was nearly eleven years old. From about the time I was first in Lebanon with Yusef, I thought, and smiled.

  The marketing maidens had long gone about their functions, but I still reduced the page to a tab and walked away out to the mezzanine landing that overlooked the lobby, leaving my jacket on the back of the chair to show the place was taken. I know, it’s stupid and embarrassing, but I was suddenly thinking that the Business Centre was being monitored too.

  And I dialled Roger Passmore’s number on the mobile Sarah had given me only for contacting the Centre, only for contacting her. I was disobeying her for the first time and I felt a momentary twinge of sorrow for
that, which I swept away. I had known since Yusef’s house that I was going to do this. This was my time now. All mine.

  The stiff, bored voice of his PA. It was like I’d never been away. A pause, some music. I pictured the scene. Young men and women, perhaps, being turfed out of Roger’s office.

  Then: “Natalie. How good to hear you. Is everything all right?”

  I didn’t reply immediately. I couldn’t. It was like continuing a long-dead conversation, one that had started years ago. Strangely, it was also like hearing someone I thought was dead.

  “Hello?” he said and I feared he was going to do that cradle-tapping thing that people only do in movies.

  “Hello, Roger,” I said at last and was surprised by the flat calm of my voice. I presumed I was going on tape.

  “Natalie, what’s been happening?”

  It had that false breeziness of someone unqualified to deal with a wild animal. And I laughed, a dry little airy chuckle, genuine, not for him, a release of anxiety, I suppose. Isn’t that what they say about comedy, about timing? I had rehearsed what I needed to say.

  “I need two things, Roger. I need your email address. A private one. A secure one. I’m sure you have one of those, yes? And I need to see you, alone, at eleven thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that.”

  “Oh, you will. Trust me. Give me that email.”

  “Can you tell me what this about?”

  “Give me an email and sit in front of it now.”

  I collected myself and lowered my voice.

  “I want you to have it now. Are you in front of a computer?”

  He answered slowly, like he was looking at someone else.

  “I can use my tablet, yes.”

  “So give me your fucking address. I promise it’ll be worth it.”

  I returned to the PC. Another pause from him.

  “OK, Natalie. Keep calm. Are you taking this down? It’s rogerrabbit21, all one word, with numerals . . .”

  Somehow that moment made it all worthwhile. His email tag was rogerrabbit. And I’d never have known if I hadn’t gone through all this.

  “Make sure you get the double-R in the middle.”

  “Got it,” I said. “But only the twenty-first, Roger. Aw.”

  That would be fun on the replays, office juniors smirking. But maybe he’d have it edited out.

  “Never mind,” I said as I tapped in his address. Send. “There.”

  And after a moment: “Has it arrived?”

  But I knew it had. Silence his end. I hung up and turned off the mobile.

  I lay across the cover of another bed, my head just below the cheap and over-inflated hotel pillows. I’d had to move fast and couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been to leave my bag in my room. I’d grabbed it from the first floor, no trouble with the lifts, and ran from the hotel.

  I made the sanctuary of the Tube and took the eastbound Central Line. It was nearly empty. There was only a fair and pretty girl with a dark boy in a pushchair sharing the lift – a nanny, I guessed. No one looked at me. But I got off at Oxford Street – plenty of exits, always crowds outside – to watch my back, just in case. Nothing, so I carried on to Liverpool Street and found a small budget hotel on the margins of Shoreditch, built of mock-sandstone with a glass corner. I checked in again, this time using cash from Masha’s card. A moment’s concern again as the cashier stared at the screen, but then she smiled up at me.

  “Would you like an early morning call?”

  On the bed five minutes later, I realised I was relaxed again for the first time since I’d left Yusef’s bed. It felt a little post-coital, like Yusef had just rolled away. I wanted lazily to turn the mobile on, to see the numbers coming in, to see if Sarah had called, as she promised she would, using the cover of her switchboard through the Centre. I wanted to see if there were numbers starting with the international +44 or just marked “blocked” or “private number” because they would surely be from Roger’s office. They’d be trying to catch up. And I wondered if Sarah already knew I’d betrayed her, betrayed her trust by going my own way. I’m sorry, Sar.

  But I’d said all that needed to be said in that last call. I felt in control, even if they found me now and took me in. Whatever, I was safe now. I’d disobeyed orders by presenting my calling card myself, my “life assurance”, as Yusef had called it. But I reasoned it was the same deal, whether I did it or the Centre did – now no one would want me dead, not yet. And, this way, I was finishing the job myself. Well, finishing my job.

  I wandered downstairs, ordered half a pizza in a bar, drank espresso, had a long bath back in my room, thinking of nothing in particular, feeling little other than a frisson of anticipation for the next day. The night deepened and the hotel stilled against the traffic that streamed around the road junctions outside. I felt no real need to sleep, but did anyway, naked, between sheets that I knew now weren’t going to be bathed in my blood.

  In the morning, I was up like I had a regular job. Bizarrely, I stretched my back and legs against the desk cabinet and tried some sit-ups, the palms of my hands behind my head. I wanted to be stretched, able to move easily. Again, no need to check out – I wasn’t coming back.

  The Arab scarf wrapped around my head, I walked to Bank – I don’t know why; something about not using the same station twice? Crossing the roads regularly, dawdling, doubling back across pedestrian traffic lights, always checking my tail. I’d grown accustomed to this behaviour, this street-craft, self-taught. Nothing that I could see.

  On the platform, there was a loose crowd to weave my way through. I jumped off the first two Central Line trains that arrived, just as the train doors were closing. No one followed from other doors. Everyone on the platform left with the train. At Bond Street, I walked up through subterranean shops to the surface. It felt good. I was alone. And then south through Mayfair. It was nearly 10.40. In Burlington Arcade, the Dickensian Olde London shopfronts bulged like overfed bellies constrained by corsetry.

  I hailed a cab, heading east on Piccadilly, asked for St Paul’s, turned the mobile on again and called Roger. He answered directly this time.

  “Good morning, Roger. Here are your joining instructions. Please come to Brown’s Hotel in Albemarle Street at eleven thirty. Ask for me at the desk. And please come alone.”

  No harm in being polite. I left the mobile on and pushed it hard down between the armrest and the seat. It amused me that if they were getting excited about tracking the phone, then they’d be following a black cab all over Greater London – maybe even out to an airport. That might tie up some Ruperts while I spoke to Roger. We were stationary in traffic at Piccadilly Circus and I said there had been a change of plan, pushed a fiver through the partition to the cab driver and set off back down Piccadilly.

  Now I had to separate Roger from any minders. Assuming he came to the hotel and didn’t just send a courier to collect whatever was at the concierge. Maybe he’d send Toby, if he was back. I rather hoped he would. I could complain about his coffee. But I guessed he’d come himself, if this had all been his own operation. He had to keep his own secrets, if no one else’s.

  Brown’s straddles a pair of parallel streets that lead north from Piccadilly, each with an entrance, each running northbound traffic. I’d been there for a fundraiser and watched Americans leave via Albemarle, while the Brits and staff left by Dover Street.

  I guessed Roger would know that. It might just make it tricky for him to cover at short notice. It might also further split up those on my case who weren’t by now following the cab. But I didn’t know. I was guessing.

  I asked the concierge for paper and an envelope and scribbled a note for Roger and left it at the desk, like a worried daughter. Then I left by the Albemarle entrance, walked briskly round the block and back in through the Dover door, picked up a newspaper and waved away a waitress. Outside I could see cabs on the Dover Street rank. Good.

  At a little after 11.30, I saw Roger arrive by th
e Albemarle door, as I anticipated he would. He looked in the dark little coffee lounge and I watched him, distorted through bevelled glass, darkly, rather as I had once watched Adrian through a bathroom door. I feared he was going to search the ground floor and stood to leave for the Ladies.

  But, as instructed, he approached the desk, a pause, an envelope and he was leaving again by Albemarle to cross Piccadilly to the east and down St James’s Street to the old wine merchant where the note told him I’d be waiting. He pulled a mobile phone from his breast pocket, I noted.

  I left by the Dover entrance and jumped in the cab at the front of the rank. “St Paul’s cathedral,” I said again and “can we go via Pall Mall – there’s someone I have to pick up on the way.”

  Down Hay Hill, left into Berkeley Street, and I forced calmness on myself at the pedestrian crossings. The driver had all the time in his world. As we were held at the lights on Piccadilly, I saw Roger cross in front of the cab. Alone – perfect.

  As the cab swung right into St James’s Street, I said: “There he is, could you just pull over beyond him?”

  The cabbie drew up, pulled the handbrake to unlock my door, and I swung the door open into Roger’s stride.

  “Hello, Mr Rabbit,” I said, “get in.”

  He looked back up the street, so I said quietly: “Get in, or your entry wound will be just below the hairline. Loft window across the road. I’ve made some dangerous friends.”

  He smiled thinly. I don’t think he believed me. But he got in. And I knew I had him.

  I figured we had about fifteen minutes, twenty tops, but maybe a little longer if we caught traffic on the Embankment.

  “Where are you taking me, Natalie?” he asked as we pulled into the traffic heading for Trafalgar Square.